Wanna know why Media ignore war criminals? CIA calls the shots.

Mark Mazzetti's emails with the CIA expose the degradation of journalism that has lost the imperative to be a check to power

Glenn Greenwald
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 29 August 2012 14.58 EDT

EXCERPT...

But what is news in this disclosure are the newly released emails between Mark Mazzetti, the New York Times's national security and intelligence reporter, and CIA spokeswoman Marie Harf. The CIA had evidently heard that Maureen Dowd was planning to write a column on the CIA's role in pumping the film-makers with information about the Bin Laden raid in order to boost Obama's re-election chances, and was apparently worried about how Dowd's column would reflect on them. On 5 August 2011 (a Friday night), Harf wrote an email to Mazzetti with the subject line: "Any word??", suggesting, obviously, that she and Mazzetti had already discussed Dowd's impending column and she was expecting an update from the NYT reporter.

SNIP...

Even more amazing is the reaction of the newspaper's managing editor, Dean Baquet, to these revelations, as reported by Politico's Dylan Byers:

"New York Times Managing Editor Dean Baquet called POLITICO to explain the situation, but provided little clarity, saying he could not go into detail on the issue because it was an intelligence matter.

These really are cursed interesting times. One really has to read foreign papers to get what should be in American newspapers, stuff like whatever happened to that scrap of paper thing, the Constitution?

Sen. Frank Church in the Senate and Rep. Otis Pike in the House were leading investigations into the CIA and its active, yet illegal, influence upon American life. So in comes Poppy, and things quieted down. About Pike's report:

Pike was bitter over the vote. He announced to the House, "The House just voted not to release a document it had not read. Our committee voted to release a document it had read." 49 Pike was so upset that he threatened not to file a report at all with the House because "a report on the CIA in which the CIA would do the final rewrite would be a lie." 50 Later, Pike reflected that "They, the (Gerald Ford) White House, wanted to precensor our final report. This was unacceptable." 51

34. McCoy also documented the rise of torture by those that swear "we don't torture..."

He published about that in 2006.

International human experimentation law specialist and human rights activist Cheryl Welsh JD used some of McCoy's work in 2008 so that citizens can understand the nuances involved in "harsh interrogation" because, God knows, here in America-"we don't torture..."

20. +1

32. Which is why foreign policy never changes much

and hasn't since the CIA took out JFK. Read James Summers' JFK and the Unspeakable" if you have any doubts. Kennedy was the last president to stand up to them - he had the audacity to think he was POTUS - and no Democratic president since has needed more than a veiled reminder that what happened to Jack Kennedy just might happen to him as well.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has called for Tony Blair and George Bush to be hauled before the international criminal court in The Hague and delivered a damning critique of the physical and moral devastation caused by the Iraq war.

Tutu, a Nobel peace prize winner and hero of the anti-apartheid movement, accuses the former British and US leaders of lying about weapons of mass destruction and says the invasion left the world more destabilised and divided "than any other conflict in history".

Writing in the Observer, Tutu also suggests the controversial US and UK-led action to oust Saddam Hussein in 2003 created the backdrop for the civil war in Syria and a possible wider Middle East conflict involving Iran.

"The then leaders of the United States and Great Britain," Tutu argues, "fabricated the grounds to behave like playground bullies and drive us further apart. They have driven us to the edge of a precipice where we now stand – with the spectre of Syria and Iran before us."

But it is Tutu's call for Blair and Bush to face justice in The Hague that is most startling. Claiming that different standards appear to be set for prosecuting African leaders and western ones, he says the death toll during and after the Iraq conflict is sufficient on its own for Blair and Bush to be tried at the ICC.

It appears MOCKINGBIRD is not a thing of the dim past, at all. Consequently, a pretty good case can be made for a Free Press playing a role in the restoration of Justice. That's why the Constitution only mentions one business as critical for the nation's success: a Free Press.

24. ULTRACONSERVATIVES lead the nation in the school book biz: the Texas State Board of Ed.

They are the worst of a sorry lot. I'd ha ha ha ha ha if it were only funny.

Influence is achieved, almost immediately, through information. On the national scene, not only do they have We the People staring at the shiny thing, they only give most just one shiny thing at a time to consider. They are in a world of hurt, as we are on to their gangster arses. Thus, the race for ecological catastrophe and permawar. It's not only the maximum engine for power and control, it gives "Them" the best chance of survival, long-term. The 99-percent? Democracy? Without information, not so much.

26. It alarmed the nation's Founders enough to make them put it down in writing...

...that little scrap of paper thing, the Constitution. Gosh. I'm so old, I still remember the thing, something to do with transparency and oversight and responsibility and accountability. But that was before the Unitary Executive.

Perhaps we will see a restoration of that papery thing before we all end up at the revised minimum wage, my friend. What I made in '86 seems like a fortune, today.

19. the cia got in the white house with bush one....never left

21. CIA and the Media, by Carl Bernstein 10/20/77 Rolling Stone

The CIA and the Media

How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up

After leaving The Washington Post in 1977, Carl Bernstein spent six months looking at the relationship of the CIA and the press during the Cold War years. His 25,000-word cover story, published in Rolling Stone on October 20, 1977, is reprinted below.

By Carl Bernstein

October 20, 1977 In 1953, Joseph Alsop, then one of America’s leading syndicated columnists, went to the Philippines to cover an election. He did not go because he was asked to do so by his syndicate. He did not go because he was asked to do so by the newspapers that printed his column. He went at the request of the CIA.

Alsop is one of more than 400 American journalists who in the past twenty‑five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters. Some of these journalists’ relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit. There was cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services—from simple intelligence gathering to serving as go‑betweens with spies in Communist countries. Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors without‑portfolio for their country. Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested in the derring‑do of the spy business as in filing articles; and, the smallest category, full‑time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations...

25. Learned some sad news today (wasn't on the networks or cable, at all)...

GAETON FONZI – RIP

“If it ever becomes known what specific individuals comprised the apparatus that killed Kennedy, the emergence of such individuals, dead or alive, will add but inconsequential detail to the truth about the assassination because we have long known who killed President Kennedy. Could any but the most powerful elite controlling the U.S. Government have been able to manipulate individuals and events before the assassination and then bring such a broad spectrum of internal forces to cover up the crime and control the institutions within our society to keep the assassination of President Kennedy a false mystery for 50 years?” - Gaeton Fonzi

PS: Thank you for remembering Bernstein's important article. I know you remember the hidden background of his partner. All this important political news was ignored by the nation's press corpse and, thus, never heard by the American people. Today, they are too far gone to even notice what it means, if they knew.

29. The CIA and Washington Post - 2001 interview with Deborah Davis

Lisa Pease's piece on Woodward is very good. Thanks for that, Octafish. I've always considered Bernstein's Rolling Stone piece (CIA and the Media) as a mea culpa for some of the narrative that he helped Woodward sell in the Watergate story.

Here's the best description I've read about the Watergate coverage...

Watergate was not, as the stereotypical myth and breathless legends go, a great moment for democracy in which a corrupt president was brought down, and a great "investigation" reformed Washington. It was an inside coup d'état, and a limited hangout, that saved Nixon and his cabal from true exposure and jail time, and helped preserve—not reform—the system that made his crimes possible.

Watergate gave the naïve public a false sense of security—the fallacy that "they" (Washington) were "cleaning up"—and ushered in a new era of corruption. Gerald Ford, J. Edgar Hoover's right hand man on the Warren Commission, became president. Ford pardoned Nixon, and selected Nelson Rockefeller as his vice president. The CIA learned how to do a better job covering up their activities and controlling information. America's corporate media, long infiltrated and controlled by government operatives, would be increasingly corrupted and corporatized, and made into the voices of the White House. The Washington Post, never a paragon of investigative reporting, became even worse with time. Bob Woodward became a buddy stenographer for the Bush presidents...

30. Gaeton Fonzi: Updated w/excellent NYTimes obit

He did excellent work for the Church Committee and for the HSCA under Sprague.

IMO, he probably should have resigned after Sprague left.

But at least him staying allowed him to write his book, which is clearly one of the best ever in the field. And well written on top of that.

He was a class act all the way.

Gaeton Fonzi, like Jim Garrison, and Richard Sprague et al., did some excellent work on that case. In spite of some extraordinary lengths that some went to in an effort to derail their efforts. Fortunately these guys were able to emerge from this relatively unscathed. Others were not so lucky...

Bringing it back to Fonzi, Sprague and the OP. Richard Sprague, as Jim DiEugenio alluded to above, was hounded off the job as chief investigator of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. All because Sprague had promised to do a thorough investigation. Ironically, after he left his post, Richard Sprague conceded that he never really bought into the conspiracy angle. But after being subjected to withering pressure from the controlled press to back off the investigation, he was forced to reconsider...

Update: Black Op Radio remembers Gaeton Fonzi

This week's show #594 features noted researcher Gaeton Fonzi

* In memorium of Gaeton Fonzi who passed away last week
* Oct 10th1935 - August 30th, 2012
* Discusses his work researching the JFK Assassination
* Worked on the Church Committee and the HSCA
* This is a replay of show #45

# Gaeton worked for Philadelphia Magazine at the time of the assassination
# He read an article by attorney Vincent Salandria critiquing the Warren Report
# A local story due to Arlen Specter's work on the report, the single bullet theory
# The report was contradicted by it's own evidence, black and white contradictions
# Gaeton knew and interviewed Arlen who hemmed and hawed over explanations
# Gaeton's article, it is difficult to believe the Warren Commission Report is the truth
# Gaeton worked on the Church Committee and the HSCA
# In 1980 Gaeton wrote an article, about misinformation and decoys
# Calls from people like Frank Sturgis and Gerry Patrick Hemming offering to help
# A report from the Key West Airport director, Oswald and Ruby early '61 or '62
# Clare Boothe Luce admitted giving false information
# HSCA/CIA liason George Joannides and the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil
# Gaeton was hired by Richard Sprague and Bob Tannenbaum to work for the HSCA
# Sprague pressed David Atlee Phillips on Mexico City and the tapes of Oswald
# Congress could control G. Robert Blakey, interested in organized crime
# Make the Mob the fall guy, not the Agency, Blakey knew his priorities
# The acoustical evidence forced a conclusion of conspiracy as the Committee ended
# The American people have been deceived twice, by the WC and the HSCA
# David Atlee Phillips, perjury before the Committee, David Morales
# The mystery of the Kennedy Assassination, we know the truth
# The length and strength of the cover up points to the seat of power
# Salandria, the assassination was barbarous and openly arrogant
# A message to the people that their government was powerless
# David Morales, "We took care of the son of a bitch, didn't we"
# Ted Shackley ran JM/WAVE, he was not forthcoming at all
# Gerry Hemming, a likeable and very intelligent guy
# Jake Esterline, we never got to him, Ed Lansdale, not in my area
# Bloody Treason (Twyman 1997), an encyclopedic presentation, some disagreement
# The Last Investigation (Fonzi 1993), Specter didn't rebut anything
# Gaeton met Jim Garrison, liaisoned with him, straightforward honesty
# The Committee's distortion of Phillips and Valenciana testimony
# Ruth Paine was never interviewed by the Committee
# There has not yet been a valid investigation of the Kennedy assassination

22. True. I do get a lot more from foreign news, since the US media consolidations.

33. Privatized intelligence uber alles-there is no role for the Fourth Estate in fascism aside from the

official PARTY LINE-known as perception management by the people involved like John RENDON, and The Rendon Group (which is an OVERPAID asset of the Agency you mentioned, Octafish, SIR!) SPOOKS don't value the truth-only the advertising messages

41. ''He plays the man.''

Thank you, MinM. I had no idea about Rupert's real roots.

Welcome to the world's first murdochracy

by John Pilger
March 11, 2010

EXCERPT...

Murdoch knows that little separates the main political parties in Australia, Britain and America. He plays the man. In 1972, he backed Australia’s Gough Whitlam who revealed a radical reformer, even threatening to expose America’s spy bases. A furious Murdoch swung his newspapers against Whitlam with stories so outrageously skewed that rebellious journalists on The Australian burned their newspaper in the street. That has never been repeated.

Dominant themes in the Australian murdochracy, sport and celebrity gossip aside, are the promotion of war and jingoism, American foreign policy, Israel and a paternalism toward Aborigines, the world’s most impoverished indigenous people, according to the UN. This antiquated cold warring is not due entirely to the Murdoch press, of course, but the agenda is. When the Indonesian tyrant General Suharto was about to be overthrown by his own people, the editor-in-chief of The Australian Paul Kelly led a delegation to of editors of most of Australia’s principal newspapers to Jakarta. With Kelly at his side, the mass murderer, whom the Murdoch papers promoted as a “moderate”, accepted the tribute of each.

Murdoch’s most unabashed, if entertaining retainer is Greg Sheridan, foreign editor of The Australian. On one his adoring trips to the United States, home of Murdoch HQ, Sheridan wrote, “The US is the greatest possible argument for media deregulation. Every morning, I flick between Fox, CNN and MSNBC as I eat my cereal... why did it take so long for pay TV to get to Australia?”. He was referring, as if instinctively, to his master’s pay TV company, Foxtel. As for terrorism, Sheridan blames “Pilgerist Chomskyism” for “ideologically fuelling the followers of Osama bin Lenin, sorry Laden.”

One of the most effective campaigns in the Australian murdochracy has been the whitewashing of a bloody colonial past, including a series of attacks on the distinguished chronicler of the Aboriginal genocide, Professor Henry Reynolds, and the director of the National Museum of Australia, Dawn Casey, for having dared to present the truth about indigenous suffering. Australia’s great maverick historian, the late Manning Clark, was smeared by Murdoch’s Courier-Mail as a Red agent, then as a fraud, in much the style that Murdoch’s London Sunday Times smeared the Labour MP Michael Foot as a Soviet agent.